Swastika

1974

Phillippe Mora

Swastika - Controversial 1974 Documentary of the Most Reviled Man in the World.

An unexpected real-life demonstration of the "banality of evil," 1974's Swastika remains one of the most unsettling documentaries about Adolf Hitler. Rather than focusing on graphic atrocities or the infamous German leader's philosophies, it compiles over an hour and a half of rare archival film including obscure home movie footage (much of it in color) to present a dispassionate, shockingly ordinary portrait of the most reviled man in world history. The film caused a firestorm of controversy even before its release with Eva Braun's sister, Gretl, fighting to prevent its release and claiming ownership of some of the footage. Its screenings at festivals provoked violent reactions including vandalism in France, condemnation from writer James Baldwin over a snippet of Jesse Owens in the feature, and outcries over its "pro-Nazi" stance including its omnipresent poster art featuring the titular symbol.

After 1945, it took quite a while for cinema to come to grips with the aftermath of the Nazi regime. Across the board, politicians and educators presented the participants as nightmarish aberrations of humanity, demonic boogeymen now relegated to the distant past. Filmmakers took a somewhat more complicated view, whether it be in dramatized productions like Judgment at Nuremberg or epic-length documentaries like The Sorrow and the Pity. However, it was always clear that the filmmakers were absolutely damning Hitler and his followers in no uncertain terms.

Eschewing the usual condemning narration, Swastika instead compiles the footage into a compelling narrative showing Hitler in sequence through the years, intercutting footage of rallies and national events with tranquil scenes of him and Eva with their colleagues in the countryside. Seeing Hitler surrounded by puppies or discussing the potential dangers of cigarette smoking or boar hunting is a highly disorienting experience, and the film smartly avoids disrupting the proceedings with any sort of imposed creative viewpoint (apart from the surreal animated opening sequence, which features a swastika flying through space). The terse opening title card says it best: "If the human features of Hitler are lacking in the image of him that is passed on to posterity, if he is dehumanised and shown only as a devil, any future Hitler may not be recognized, simply because he is a human being."

One of the most unusual documentaries about the Nazi era, Swastika sports a surprising pedigree including co-producer Sir David Puttnam, a future Oscar winner for Chariots of Fire who had just started out with films like the sci-fi cult film The Final Programme and Jacques Demy's offbeat The Pied Piper. After this film he immediately moved on to a pair of far more outrageous films with elements of Nazi iconography, Ken Russell's Mahler and Lisztomania, before moving to more respectable territory with The Mission and Midnight Express. The film's other producer, American-born Sandy Liberson, worked with Puttnam on those same films through the Russell era and also had the 1970 classic Performance under his belt.

Swastika's director and co-writer, Philippe Mora, met both of the producers in 1973 when he moved to London from Melbourne, Australia, and they followed this up with a significantly tamer documentary about the Great Depression, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?, in 1975. His career took a bizarre turn when he returned to Australia in the mid-'70s and helmed the violent western Mad Dog Morgan with Dennis Hopper, which led to a string of strange cult titles including The Return of Captain Invincible, The Beast Within, Communion, and the two most outrageous Howling sequels. In 1997 he returned to Nazi territory with the underrated Snide and Prejudice, which features asylum inmates taking on the roles of major Third Reich figures.

The final major player in the film is its co-writer, painter and exhibition director Lutz Becker, who had just directed a well-regarded documentary about Hitler's rise to power, The Double Headed Eagle: Hitler's Rise to Power 1918-1933 in 1973. He went on to work on a trio of later Hitler docs from 1977 to 1993: Hitler: A Career, Heil Hitler! Confessions of a Hitler Youth, and Good Morning, Mr. Hitler.

All four of these men participated in the DVD release of Swastika, which first appeared in and appears more or less in the same presentation for its American home video debut from Kino. The full frame transfer looks as good as possible considering the patchwork nature of the sources used to create the film in the first place; it's particularly shocking to see how clean and vivid the color footage looks, as it often feels like watching some bizarre alternate universe Hollywood production. Much of the raw film is now apparently locked away in the National Museum in Washington, so this film's importance in public perception of history through film can't possibly be overstated now.